Talking
Urbanization
Urbanization and all of its necessary outcomes have
often been a topic of discussion throughout our time this semester. In
regards to this, many thoughts have come to mind for me personally and I would
like to discuss some of them here. In doing this I would like to refer to two
different articles.
The first
of these articles is called “Millennials Continue Urbanization of
America, Leaving Small Towns” (http://www.npr.org/2014/10/21/357723069/millennials-continue-urbanization-of-america-leaving-small-towns). I am referring to this
article because it informs us about present-day circumstances in regards to
urbanization and provides us with some explanations as to why things are the
way they are. As you can probably guess from reading the title of the article,
the author believes that Millennials are the main reason for the continuation
of urbanization in the United States and that this trend can mostly be
explained by economic reasons. The article mentions the appeal of jobs and
living in the “big city”, which are two things that have been discussed in our
class. This is worthy of note, in my opinion, because it seems as though the
reasons for urbanization have been relatively similar all throughout history. Early
on in the semester we discussed examples of urban areas from early on in human
history. One of the things we found in common between present day urban areas
and those historical ones is the idea that people thought there to be greater
economic opportunity in these urban areas. Whether this is true or not is not necessarily
the point, or, even important in this regard. More importantly the point I would
like to get across is the idea the attraction to urban areas for economic
reasons seems to have always been an allure for people of any period of time. Also,
I believe the allure of the “big city” is an explanation for why people may
believe there are greater economic opportunities in big cities. The assumption
that if there are more people in a place than that must mean there are more economic
opportunities makes sense in my opinion.
The next article is called “The Death
of Urbanization in the United States” (http://www.psmag.com/books-and-culture/death-urbanization-united-states-84225)
and as you can probably tell has an entirely different intention than the
article mentioned before. To sum it up, the writer of this article it putting
forward the idea that urbanization is not actually on the rise, rather
immigration into the United States is the real explanation for population
growth in urban area in the United States. I am including this article
specifically because it is in stark contrast to almost everything we have
discussed in class throughout the semester. Also, I am including this article
simply to provide some food for thought and another point of view on many of
the discussions we have had so far throughout the semester.
Overall, I thought this was a great read. I really enjoyed reading the articles because they were, as you said, in stark contrast with one another. It's really interesting to read two completely different articles on the topic of urbanization. You also made some great connections to the ideas that were brought up in class, which I felt really helped bring the articles home, especially with the differences from the second article to what we have been discussing in class, which is something that not everybody thinks about. The graph is also a helpful infographic because people hear that urbanization is on the rise, but putting numbers to the figure really helps visualize just how rapidly this is happening.
ReplyDeleteSomething that I feel would help expedite the reading is to just put the article out there and just talk about it. You shouldn't mention that you're including the article since you've already put the link there. Just get straight to the point. But, like I said, overall a great read! Just minor things to fix to make it a little more concise.